


Extra Rare

by suchA_Consequentialist



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blood, Explosions, M/M, TW for blood, TW for suicidal references/discussion, Violence, creative violence, generally villainous behavior, gratuitous tiger references, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 06:03:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchA_Consequentialist/pseuds/suchA_Consequentialist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We're going to release some tigers in the Louvre."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extra Rare

**Author's Note:**

> Any mistakes are mine, and I will be glad to make corrections if you find them.

They eat in one of London’s finer restaurants the day after a strange man calls Sebastian and says with a smile in his voice, “I think your tiger pelt is going to look excellent in the penthouse.” 

Sebastian Moran has ‘dishonorable discharge’ stamped on a record under his name in archives he cannot reach. The minimum-wage job he’d rather not discuss has given him just enough money to wear trousers without holes in them as he sits down on leather chairs and orders a sirloin - rare and bloody as the chef can manage. The waiter’s hesitation is indirect - a glance in the wrong direction for less than the time it would take Sebastian to pull a trigger - but it’s impossible to miss reluctance when one expects compliance. 

Jim Moriarty is a curiously well-dressed maths professor with an unexpected need for someone ruthless. After Sebastian orders he reaches out and grips the fold in the waiter’s trousers with a ferocity that is as sudden as it is paralyzing. 

“If I don’t see blood drip out every bite of that steak, tell Heston I will cook his hands over his own stove.”

The waiter rushes back to the kitchen, actually tripping over the carpet. When the food arrives in remarkable time he is not helping to deliver. 

Sebastian’s steak is perfect, and he enjoys watching Jim count the drops of blood that fall from each piece he cuts. It occurs to Sebastian that he would bleed this city dry if he could see that expression again. 

So of course he takes the job.

\---- ---- ---- ----

Jim stands at the window of the board room, his back to their client and his phone dormant on the arm of a nearby chair. Immediately to his left Sebastian waits with his hands folded loosely in front.

Babbling behind them is a man. The man is man wearing a suit that cost less than Jim’s tie pin (his closet funded by a fortune from dwindling stocks) and walks with an authority in his step that means less than the bad coffee Sebastian choked down this morning. This man seems to think his words will change the amount of control Jim has in his company’s future. The simple bastard thinks Jim needs money to erase the futures of a hundred million men and women.

Expressionless, Jim’s watches the sidewalk below. From their sixth story meeting room he can see a mother and child walking with packages. The pair merrily wanders hand in hand on no particular path up the sidewalk. Jim has not blinked since they came into view. 

Sparing a single look at their client through the reflection in the glass, Sebastian tries to divide his attention between Jim’s little pair and Jim himself. 

The client does not see Jim pull out the key fob for his 2013 Bentley Continental, parked directly in front of the building.

While their client processes that Jim is fiddling with his car rather than listening to his complaints the child below trips and stumbles. She lands on the pavement with one small arm outstretched to catch herself on the side of the Bentley. The mother is the first to jump back in horror as the car’s theft alarm suddenly blares, and Jim smirks – his hand on the customized panic button.

From across the street, a police officer begins yelling at the mother, unable to see her small child behind the obscenely expensive car. She is looking frantically between the law and her child’s bloody knees.

Behind them, the client takes four steps forward. In between his first and last step Jim has begun laughing at the young mother below, winking at Sebastian. Before the client can so much as open his mouth, Sebastian snatches his wrist and snaps his fingers back against the top of his pale suit sleeve. Crumbling with shock, the man makes a sound that reminds Sebastian of monkeys he sliced in the jungle to use as bait.

Jim laughs on and on; the sound is more like music to Sebastian than any of the Stravinsky or Bach he had been raised to applaud.

\---- ---- ---- ----

Jim is fond of Sebastian’s ideas (or at the very least amused by them). For the first few weeks of Sebastian’s employment he had forced his new sniper to play question and answer games.

Then they weren’t games anymore.

Questions like “How long do you think before he’ll sing?” became a calculated “Oh, four minutes. Disappointing,” and “Where would you put it?” became “How many more before he chokes?” (That led to Sebastian owing Jim two hundred quid.)

The day he asks who Sebastian would save for their very last kill they have just come in from detonating the bank of a former client – and subsequently quite a few poorly run dining establishments. It’s perhaps the release of adrenaline that keeps him from laughing in response.

He rattles off a suggestion (one of the duchesses) but Jim dismisses the idea immediately - insists Sebastian get creative.  
The question will be repeated at least six more times.

\---- ---- ---- ----

Jim is taking MI5’s slap on the wrist with predictable patience. Sebastian is almost embarrassed for them. From countless miles away he can blindly map out the progression of Jim’s interrogation. He knows the places they’ll star and pictures their last resorts. No one else is as familiar with their fist in Jim Moriarty’s face - hands speckled with his blood - his expression unyielding but tolerant.

Jim will hide his laughter out of some psychological game Sebastian understands but could never verbalize. Jim knows the less Myrcroft Holmes sees the less damage Sebastian will want to inflict, because Jim has always been as possessive of Sebastian’s knuckles as Seb is of his smile.

When Jim walks in the door after a month in the dark of the Crown’s lowest cells, he looks Sebastian in the eyes and grins. 

Sebastian ignores the tension that seems to bleed out of his muscles all at once.

Grunting “Finally,” he continues to text one of their pocket politicians as Jim goes to change. Sebastian can hear him whistling I Fought the Law from the bedroom. 

An hour later Jim sighs, slouched down into the couch with a bowl of soup and a glass of Glenlivet.

”They thought I valued my face more than you do,” he says, hoping to irk Sebastian for demanding that he eat.

“Bugger ‘Em.” Sebastian mutters, pointedly studying the blueprints on the floor and not the black and blue dents in Jim’s face.

\---- ---- ---- ----

Jim loves watching Sebastian kill, celebrates his knife work and the precision of his shots.

Jim’s method is the exact opposite, everything done with flair and humor – even if he is never less accurate for it. 

Sebastian has caught him muttering jokes to himself once or twice looking through the scope set up not two hours before. He’s always ready to take a shot for his sniper if the person is looking ready to run again, or if he simply gets bored, or thinks that they look too nice, too hungry, too thoughtful, too nervous. Jim can create a hundred reasons - complex and completely justified - to kill anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Sebastian is always waiting in the background, remembering to change the rugs in their Kensington flat after seeing the blood from a headshot soak into Persian carpets.

\---- ---- ---- ----

The night before the arrest Sebastian returns to the flat to find Jim already dressed in his tourist skin, V-neck shirt pulled tight across his stomach and his shoes thoughtlessly tucked under him - digging into the fabric of a thousand pound sofa.

Jim is gazing rather contemptuously at the television, his head moving from one side to the other in that funny way he had.

Sebastian hears Tchaikovsky drifting from the screen and winces at The Black Swan DVD case tossed beside the entertainment stand. Pacing into the kitchen and dropping his gun on the table, he ignores the sounds of the film as steadily as Jim remains transfixed by them.

“Her footwork is appalling,” Jim suddenly calls. As an afterthought he mutters, “She’d dance better without toes.”

Sebastian lights a cigarette, studying the contents of their cupboards, “I don’t think Hollywood will fit into our plans for the month.”

“Pencil it in for June.”

Closing the cupboard doors, Sebastian pulls out his phone and enters “LA” into their calendar with bloody thumbs.

The time slot is labeled ‘tentative.’

\---- ---- ---- ----

Jim takes the corn syrup pellets for a test run, shooting himself in front of a young duchess. Her face as he walks away is priceless (like the diamonds Sebastian picks off her corpse).

\---- ---- ---- ----

Sherlock falls, and walks away from the cemetery where John Watson says goodbye like a prat – marching off in a stiff military gate that makes Sebastian crave the crack of his shin bones.

Jim comes down from the roof with a headache and a different ringtone. And he spends the next year in an African country, begging Sebastian to bring home a crocodile, spinning a new web – one with more strings and stickier strands. The victims fall harder, faster, and Sherlock has more to untangle.

\---- ---- ---- ----

"He spotted Wilson today."

"Oh? Playing nice with the other beggars?" Jim picks up one of the phones from the floor beside Moran, crouched low on the dirt of a foreign country in pressed dress slacks.

"Deranged war vets, but they're still practically the same thing." Moran affirms, and barely looks up from the Nokia he fiddles with as Jim suddenly stands - hurling his phone against a rickety wall.

Going still, he runs his hands through his hair, saying "Still predictable, still boring, still _useless_.” The words are a hiss by the time he finishes.

Moran keeps one eye on the fingers pressing into Jim’s scalp (only Sherlock fucking Holmes could tear out Jim’s hair from two bloody continents away). As if coming to a sudden decision, Jim’s fist closes around clumps of his slick hair, pulling slowly as he breathes and eventually releases his grip. 

“Book one of Tall Dark and Handsome’s private planes for 5 tomorrow.”

Moran’s eyes slide from the screwdriver in his hand to the blood on Jim’s fingernails and back. “Going to buy the detective a sandwich?” he asks through gritted teeth.

Stalking gracefully over to where Sebastian sits, Jim straddles him – knees back in the dirt. "We’re going to lure him out,” he purrs, “Release some tigers in the Louvre." 

Beneath his black tee shirt, Sebastian can feel Jim’s fingers wandering up toward the old scars he knows Jim wants to extend. 

Craving a cigarette, Sebastian retorts, "Cover a Siberian in blood and they’re likely to think we’ve gone activist."

“I wasn’t talking about kittens, genius” Jim cuffs Sebastian’s ear and finishes in a hiss before he seems to calm. Then rather suddenly he smiles. “We’re going to use _real_ tigers."

\---- ---- ---- ----

It is the only question Jim ever asks him more than once.

“Who should we save for last, dear? Whoooo gets to say goodbye?” And Jim sometimes asks with the tip of a knife rotating gently on his fingertips, or a math book shredded around the couch. It’s always phrased the same and it always comes out soft from between Jim’s sharp little teeth.

If there’s an answer they can’t seem to agree on it - yet Sebastian is keenly aware Jim already knows. After three years, he’s convinced that Jim always has. If Sebastian is honest with himself, he’s known too.

The idea of a finale has never made him anything but bored, but in between that first steak and the last kill Sebastian slits throats and takes aim at whomever Jim orders with the pulse of an overexcited teenager. He pretends he doesn’t notice how close it takes them to Switzerland. 

If the irony makes Jim laugh and everything ends bloody, then Sebastian will follow as he always has. 

He is a carnivore after all.


End file.
